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Robert Mason Pollock, who teamed with his wife, Eileen “Mike” Pollock, to write for the popular ABC drama Dynasty before they launched the spinoff series The Colbys, has died. He was 99.
Pollock, who shared a Daytime Emmy nomination with his wife and future Inside the Actors Studio host James Lipton for their writing on the soap opera The Doctors, died July 11 in Palm Springs, the Desert Sun newspaper reported.
The couple met in New York while working on the ABC Radio drama My True Story and married seven months later. They were awarded a star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars in 1997, and The Pollock Theatre at College of the Desert in Palm Desert, Calif., was named for them.
“Bob nicknamed her Mike because they met over radio microphones,” Mark Anton, a close friend of Pollock’s, said in the Desert Sun article. “They were a true love story.”
Mike died in December 2012, just three weeks after she and her husband celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary. She was 86.
In the early 1970s, the Pollocks helped write almost 300 episodes of NBC’s long-running soap The Doctors. A job with the ABC daytime serial General Hospital brought them to California, and that in turn led to a stint on Aaron Spelling’s Dynasty, for which they penned 73 episodes and served as supervising producers during the show’s first four seasons (from 1981-84).
The couple then left to create and produce for The Colbys, starring Charlton Heston. It ran for two seasons, from 1985-87.
A native of Atlanta, Pollock covered the opening of Gone With the Wind as a cub reporter and served during World War II as Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s chief of public radio relations. He and his wife then spent time in France, interviewing fashion designers and actors on their radio program, Two Americans in Paris.
Back in the States, they wrote for TV dramas including Robert Montgomery Presents, The U.S. Steel Hour, Philco Playhouse and Hallmark Hall of Fame before spending five years on The Doctors.
The Pollocks also collaborated with Maurice Chevalier to write the 1960 book With Love, about the romantic life of the French actor and singer.
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